The Film That Wouldn’t Die (until it was released)

Dean Jagger’s name is not usually associated with stinkingly bad movies. It’s true, he was in the disappointing Revolt of the Zombies in 1936… but those were early days, both for Jagger’s career and for zombies on film.

Jagger went on to win acclaim for his roles in Brigham Young and Twelve O’Clock High (for which he won the 1950 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). As for his genre performances, he’s fondly remembered for playing a Quatermass surrogate in X: the Unknown, in which he teamed up with Leo McKern to fight a radioactive blob from the Earth’s core.

That’s why it’s so surprising to find a movie like Evil Town (1973/74/87) near the end of his distinguished career. It’s not just that Dean Jagger’s in a movie this bad — Evil Town took 14 years, three versions and at least five titles before it finally got released, so you can imagine what a nightmare the finished product turned into. No: the real surprise is that of all the terrible things in this terrible movie, Jagger’s performance is pretty close to the bottom.

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The thing I find most interesting about this Frankensteinian monster of a film is the change in attitude hinted at in the closing paragraphs: in the 1970s film (particularly in its original form) it’s the standard hopelessness of that decade, but by the 1980s footage it’s more conventional, in that bad things happen but eventually the forces of authority will show up and make everything all right again. Does the rest of the footage show that split in attitude; are the differences in visual style so glaring that it’s not really noticeable?

I have no actual proof that Jagger’s footage wasn’t intended to go in the original, but that’s my feeling… and my main reason for thinking Jagger was added later is the difference in tone between his scenes and the main thread of the movie. There’s no hint in the main story line that there’s a stock Mad Scientist involved in the plan. In fact, Jagger’s scenes fit better visually and in tone with the 1987 footage. If the promotional materials for Dr. Shagetz weren’t clearly labeled 1974, and if a couple of critics hadn’t mentioned they’d seen rough cuts of the film, I’d have thought Jagger’s scenes were filmed much later… even though James Keach looks the same.

The more Jagger talks, the less consistent his explanation is with what we’ve seen in town. And we certainly don’t expect to see a roomful (two roomsful) of twitching zombies in the hospital — that just seems like an unfortunate afterthought. I don’t know how Dr. Shagetz would have ended… the original footage suggests Keach was just about to get away, but if I judge the tone of the original correctly, there would have been a deadly twist at the end. Perhaps they’d have told their story to a friendly grey-haired sheriff…

This is an extremely interesting peek at what seems to have started out as a project with great potential. Where did you run across all this fascinating background dirt, if that’s not a trade secret? I presume there’s not a Criterion edition ‘Evil Town’ Director’s Cut out there anywhere.

I wish I could claim some sort of insider knowledge, or even some original research; but in fact a simple Google search will return as much info as anybody seems to know… There are a couple of discussion groups that unearthed some tantalizing bits of information about the film and its origins. It’s all very sketchy. The rest is purely my ill-informed speculation, based on the obvious patchwork nature of the movie.